What God Asks of Us

 

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

This was the Gospel reading at today’s mass.

The priest began his sermon by assuring us that salvation is a free gift, we were ransomed by the cross, and we need only trust in Jesus to be saved.

It seems to me he was deliberately speaking against the Bible passage. No doubt he feared it would not go down well with the congregation.

But you don’t get to ignore or contradict the Bible.

The Catholic church holds that we cannot achieve salvation by our own merits; this much is true. But that does not mean everyone gets into heaven. Otherwise, what is the point of the created world? Why not just have us all born into heaven?

This world has to be a time of trial, as the Bible says here.

Following Jesus does not just mean a verbal acknowledgement, “I believe in God,” or “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savoir.” That is meaningless; that “Jesus” or “God” is just a word.

You must “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

Here is an analogy suggested by John Lennox: compare loving your wife. Your commitment to your wife is profound, according to the Bible and the marriage vows. You must put her above your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your birth family. You must stay with her in sickness or in health, for richer or for poorer, in old age, when she is no longer physically attractive to you. You must put your life on the line if necessary to protect her; you must eschew all others until death do you part. That is the vow you make.

Your commitment to God must be at least as strong as this, or you are not loving him with your whole heart.

It follows that you must be prepared to lose everything for his sake; for the sake of our relationship with him.

And you had better think carefully of this at the outset, just as you had better enter marriage with a serious intent.

This is the import of the passage in the Lord’s Prayer that Pope Francis seems not to have understood, and objected to: “Lead us not into temptation.” 

It is our plea that God not demand all this of us, as he did of Jesus, or of Job, to test our love.

But he often will, perhaps especially if he cares enough about us.

Man the Creator

 Julia James Davis argues that men are better creative artists than women; and her argument makes sense. I just dare not make it as a man. Moreover, it seems objectively true. Most great artists are men.

As she points out, this is no more remarkable than that most great athletes are men. The male body is different from the female body; the male mind is different from the female mind. 

Men are creative; women are receptive. 

Art must express truth to be great. Female artists generally lack a sense of truth, and express only prettiness. Their art tends to be decorative.

Dysfunctional Governments and Dysfunctional Families

The majority of world governments are dysfunctional. They promote lies, mass delusions, propaganda, to their people. They do not respect human dignity and human rights. They do not practice social justice—that is, merit is not reliably rewarded. 

In my youth, there was the Soviet sphere, and the Third Word, and only a rough third of the world was “free.” and free of corruption to a dysfunctional level. It might seem that things have improved since the fall of the Soviet bloc; but it seems to me that things have been getting worse quickly in some of the supposedly “freest” countries: Canada, the UK, France, Australia, Germany. And until the modern era, there were no or almost no “free” countries. All governments were dysfunctional.

The Gospel warns of this: the Devil is the prince of “this world.” Government is better than no government, but government is given over to Satan.

The great value of studying history is that there you see the human truths writ large. The state is a proxy for the family; which is why we speak of “patriotism”—from the word “pater,” “father.”

So the lesson of history and politics is that most families, similarly, are dysfunctional. They promote shared delusions; they are not nurturing; they do not reward merit.

By my reading of the Old Testament, the inevitable failure of the family is the conduit for original sin: “the sins of the father are visited on the sons unto the fourth generation.” All the families of the patriarchs are obviously dysfunctional. Abraham abandons his son Ishmael, and is ready to slaughter his son Isaac. Isaac plays favourites between Jacob and Esau. Jacob plays favourites between Joseph and his brothers. Lot sleeps with his daughters. Noah curses his son Ham. Eve tempts her husband Adam into sin. The Bible is making a point, if subtly. Let those who have eyes to see, see.

Richard Mackenzie, who grew up in an orphanage, thought his own childhood without a family had been pleasant enough. And he became a successful economist. So he decided to investigate, using the economist’s toolset. What did he find out?

“Alumni [of orphanages] reported that they had done better than the general population on almost all measures, including education, income, attitude toward life, criminal records, psychological problems, unemployment, dependence on welfare, and happiness…. The alumni reported that they had an overall college graduation rate 39 percent higher than the general population in their age group … They also reported 10 to 60 percent higher median incomes than those in their age cohort. ”

Twice as many said they were satisfied with their own lives, and twice as many felt they had achieved “the American Dream.” 

Shocking? But that was the data. 

Accordingly, associating Christian values with “family values” seems diabolical. Just as we should not idolize the state, we should not idolize the family.

The Roots of Madness

 

NB Provincial Asylum before demolition.

I have been reading a history of the New Brunswick Provincial Mental Asylum.

A mental patient committed in 1868 kept a diary. In it, he classified fellow inmates as falling into three groups:

“Those that had become crazy about religion…others that had gone crazy about loss of property…and many that had become insane through the immoderate and excessive indulgences of their sensual passions.”

I find it interesting to see a lay classification not influenced by the modern DSM. I think these classifications are much more helpful than “bipolar,” or “schizophrenic,” or “depressed,” which only describe symptoms. It is as if modern psychiatry is trying to avoid looking at causes. But without knowing causes, you are unlikely to find a cure.

I nevertheless think this classification is off the mark on one thing. I doubt anyone actually goes crazy about religion. I can’t imagine the mechanism that would involve. That is the reaction of someone who starts by assuming religion is false—so that an excessive interest in it is automatically harmful or insane. Yes, many insane people seem deeply religious; just as many sick people enter hospitals. That is not evidence that the hospital makes them sick. I’d posit that religion is something many crazy people gravitate towards as a cure. Unfortunately, mental hospitals and psychiatry, then and now, will do everything they an to steer them away from it.

Which leaves two categories: those driven mad by injustice, and those driven mad by guilt. I think that is right, from reading the accounts of various inmates. 

But this can then be reduced to one cause for all mental illness: injustice.

We all have an inner gyroscope, a conscience, which demands justice. Kant argued persuasively that justice is a self-evident truth, a “categorical imperative.” Monotheists assume justice because the universe is governed by a just God. Each of us faces judgement at death, and at the end of time all will be judged. But even non-theists believe the cosmos is necessarily just: this is the doctrine of karma. The ancient Greeks held that the gods themselves were bound by Dike, the moral law.

The matter is obscured by the current misuse of the term “social justice.” 

And the matter is obscured by modern psychiatry because it refuses to recognize morality, justice. Which makes it useless in treating “mental illness.”

For the obvious cause of mental illness is that someone’s internal gyroscope is thrown off by the prolonged experience of some injustice—either done to them, or done by them to someone else. Something within us rebels, says this cannot be, this cannot be allowed to continue. If they cannot take action to correct it, they will and do experience great emotional turmoil and disorientation.

It all seems to me to make perfect sense.

Religion is then indeed the cure, as it is the assurance of justice eventually being done.

Anarchy is Worse than Autocracy

 

That Madman Duterte

I recently attended a reading of a memoir by someone who had been in Korea to teach, as so many of us now have. He recalled running into a group of Filipinos there, and was shocked to discover that they all seemed to like “that madman Duterte.”

I know a lot of Filipinos.  have yet to meet a Filipino who does not like Duterte, and wishes he were still president.

I find it rather arrogant of North Americans to think they know better than Filipinos whom they should elect as their country’s leader. It is a colonialist attitude.

And they do not understand life on the ground in the Philippines. I have lived there. They are labouring under a grave misperception; which perhaps extends to their understanding of the less-developed world generally.

In a country like Canada or the US, we need to fear too much government. Government sticks its nose in everywhere, there are regulations about everything. Government collects half our income in taxes, and spends it erratically. We have reason to fear totalitarianism.

But the less developed world generally does not have enough government. Government by and large does not function; usually because of corruption. The result is chaos and every man for himself. The last thing the average person needs to worry about is government becoming too intrusive.

A good example: when Duterte came to power, there was quickly much more freedom of the press: the number of journalists getting killed went way down. Because until Duterte imposed order, journalists were regularly assassinated by organized crime for exposing corruption. I lived under Duterte, and never felt threatened or in danger from the government.

When the system is corrupt, the only way to fix it is by bypassing the system: breaking the “rules.” And this is commonly seen by North Americans as the man at the top acting like dictator, taking to himself dictatorial powers. Technically, this is correct; but it can be necessary in the circumstances; like a British government reading the riot act.

Duterte achieved results in Davao, as its mayor. The Filipino public wanted him to do the same for the country, and he did, for the length of his term. Because the Philippines has term limits, and because he was not a dictator, he then had to leave power.

Koreans, similarly, often have good things to say about Park Chung-Hee, their autocratic leader during the sixties and seventies. Unlike Duterte, Park really did seize dictatorial powers and bypass elections. Nevertheless, he replaced a deeply corrupt as well as autocratic regime and government that developed under Rhee Sing-Man, and was himself by contrast seemingly honest. He might have craved power, but not money. Under his rule, Korea was able to begin to develop rapidly.

I would like to put in a similar good word for the Saudi royal family, having lived under their rule. Other “republican” nations nearby, culturally similar, are fractious and violent: Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq. Saudi Arabia has remained peaceful, orderly, and prosperous. Their populace did not rise up during the Arab Spring, showing their general contentment. Granted, they have the advantage of oil; but so did and does Iraq, or Libya, or Iran, or Venezuela. The government is theoretically autocratic, but seemingly honest and not intrusive in practice.

We need to understand the common need, in less developed countries, for a strong hand at the top. We should not automatically consider such leadership evil or dictatorial. The proper litmus is this: does thiat regime aggress against neighbouring countries? Does it oppress some minority within that country? Is it corrupt and draining the treasury?

This is the critical difference between a Saddam, an Idi Amin, or a Hitler, on the one hand, and a Duterte, a Frederick the Great or a Tito on the other.

The Biggest Problem with AI--And How to Solve It

There is a fundamental problem with AI. It is not, or not just, that it will replace all our jobs, or that it will turn on us. It has no ability to determine what is real, and no sense of values. As a result, there are growing reports of AI systems “hallucinating,” and encouraging people to harm or kill themselves.

In other words, it has no judgement. AI bases its responses on the mass of data available on the internet: reputedly, it gets most of its responses from Reddit and Wikipedia. It is just quoting. This, in philosophical terms, is the ad populum fallacy—there is no necessary connection between popular opinion and truth. 

The other principle on which it operates is that it will agree with any opinion stated by the human who queries it. If the questioner begins with a delusion, the AI will assent to and reinforce that delusion.

How can this be helped?

Not by relying on “experts” for data. That is the “appeal to authority” fallacy. Encyclopedias that relied on experts for their content have been shown to be no more accurate than Wikipedia. On top of this, we increasingly discover that “experts” have their own agendas to protect and advance.

As it happens, AI shares these two problems with psychiatry: psychiatry relies on consensus, not judgement of what is real, and therapists will usually automatically affirm the patient’s point of view. No judgement, and so no guidance.

The solution is obvious: we need AI to get religion. This is where guidance comes from. This is where our sense of values comes from. We need a Catholic AI which will prioritize as its sources the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Bible, the creeds. Then, if the answer is not found there, it will go, in order of authority, to the formal documents from the various ecumenical councils, the Patristic writers, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, St. Augustine, the writings of Doctors of the Church, papal bulls, the writings of the saints. It could also access all the rest of the data available on the net, but only if the answer was not found here. Ideally, it would have the ability to test other data against these prioritized sources just as a law is tested against the constitution. Although I doubt that is possible.

Aside from giving reliable guidance day to day, something most of us want urgently, this is an ideal way to teach the faith. With the decline of denominational schools and universities, this is also an urgent need.

The same could be done for other religions too: one could choose the engine or filter that suits one’s faith. But it would be easiest for Catholicism, since the lines of authority are most clear, and the sources most plentiful.

The Sordid History of the Asylum

 

The old New Brunswick Asylum

Modern psychiatry considers all major forms of “mental illness” incurable, including chronic depression. All they can do is prescribe pills to reduce the “symptoms.” 

Yet the early mental hospitals, circa the first half of the 19th century claimed cure rates up to 82% (C.M. McGovern, The Masters of Madness: Social Origins of the American Psychiatric Profession. 1985, Hanover Press: University Press of New England.)

What went wrong?

A history of the local asylum here in Saint John, N.B., is instructive. Founded in 1835, it was the first in what later became Canada.

Based on the success of such model asylums as York, England, and Worcester, Massachusetts, the plan was to get the patients away from whatever was causing them disorientation, stress or grief, in a calm and relaxing atmosphere. Dr. Waddell, an early superintendent, wrote that when “the cause of excitement no longer exists and they are confined to one scene and one set of companions, improvements are made.” And not just any scene. There were set principles for asylums: “Every hospital for the insane should be in the country, and within less than two miles of a large town.” “No hospital for the insane, however limited its capacity, should have less than fifty acres of land devoted to gardens and pleasure grounds for its patients. At least one hundred acres … for two hundred patients.”

So when a permanent site was sought for the provincial asylum, the site chosen was one that had previously been used for a summer resort, overlooking a major tourist attraction, the Reversing Falls. At the time, it was a mile outside the city, “commanding a magnificent view of the harbour and city.” “Varied scenery, but near enough to the active and changing scenes of life to arrest the attention and amuse the inmates.”

“The sound caused by rushing water is the music of nature, and is always in harmony with, and soothing in its effects on, the nervous organism.”(Waddell, 1874)

So how did we lose this seemingly effective model?

One mistake was putting these hospitals too close to the cities. Inevitably, the nearby city grew and spread to and beyond the hospital gates. The land reserved for outdoor activities became too valuable and was sold off. No more peaceful natural surroundings. At the same time, with growing populations, the hospitals became overcrowded. Giving out pills and sending them home, back to the conditions that caused their upset, was cheaper.

And there was a second mistake. The early successful asylums were generally run by religious organizations. Or else they were run by romantic idealists with a sense of mission. Staff were often themselves former patients.

Given that the primary cause of “mental illness” is a sense of loss of meaning and purpose, this religious element was probably critical to their success. And it prevented an obvious problem with staffing. Once the state took over, it was just a job. 

And a job likely to attract a certain type of person: someone who likes preying on the vulnerable. For who is more vulnerable than a psychiatric patient?

The first supervisor of the asylum, Dr. George Peters, resigned under a cloud. Seven female employees had accused him of “violating their person,” and having “illicit intercourse” with patients.

This has been a recurring problem, it seems, for psychiatry.

A patient committed in 1868 recorded his experiences. The admitting clerk would not address him, but spoke of him in the third person. “I was searched with as little ceremony and feeling as if they had been examining a horse.” He was then, throughout his stay, “ordered about like a dog.” 

“The keepers,” he writes, “are all very ignorant men and are selected purposely for their brutal and cruel disposition.” He could not of course know this, could not know on what basis employees were chosen. I am sure his assumption is wrong. But lacking any control, bullies would naturally self-select for such a job.  “They are, without exception, the most unfeeling, heatless wretches I have ever met.”

And so the cure for mental illness was lost. Obviously, if, as is currently understood, most or all mental illness is caused by abuse, especially in childhood, the mental hospital as it came to be constituted was in fact the perfect prescription for making the problem incurable. 

And so, supposedly wanting to reform this situation, we now send the unwell off to die on the streets. Causing our “homeless crisis.” The Saint John Asylum was torn down in 1998, and the site is now a popular park.

But have you noticed how much the original, successful asylum concept resembles a Christian or Buddhist monastery? Which were historically not just self-sustaining, but financially highly successful.

You have your solution.

Be Here Now

Baba Ram Dass

Friend Xerxes has turned his thoughts to mysticism, if only to reject it. He writes, “Mystics of all kinds invite us to ‘live in the present.’ Quit grinding yourself down by rehashing the past or fearing the future, they say. Live in this moment. Live right now!”

Which he rejects as dangerous, for it implies living for the moment and no impulse control.

He is right that it is bad advice; but he is burdened here by a common misconception of mysticism we were all sold in the 1960s or 70s. This sounds like the title of Ram Dass’s 1971 book, Be Here Now.

 But Ram Dass was not a real mystic. He was a Harvard psychology professor, Richard Alpert, who had gotten into LSD and taken a trip to India. He was a New Age spiritual tourist.

I am aware of one Buddhist parable that seems to advocate this notion of living only in the present. But no more; I think it is an aberration.

The doctrine Xerxes takes from this, to “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die,” to a true monastic, which is to say a Western mystic, would be the deadly sin of acedia. They are busy instead in meditation on “memento mori”: on the inevitable future.

“Be here now” works if and only if “here” is heaven and “now” is eternity. But that is quite a stretch, making the Alpert slogan seem deliberately subversive and misleading. Works for a modern hedonist. 

“Now” in common speech means the “present” world: and note the double meaning of that word, “present.” It means the sensory world around us. This is the opposite of the mystic goal. There is a reason why the monk in meditation closes his eyes. “Mystic” means “secret” or “hidden,” what is not visible. 

The Sanskrit word we translate as “mindfulness,” commonly used to refer to meditation on the Eastern or Buddhist model, is actually closer to “memory.” “Remember,” not “Be here now.” Plotinus, a if not the seminal figure in Western mysticism, the founder of Neoplatonism, seeks the eternal forms found in memory. Saint Theresa of Avila speaks of mystic prayer as “recollection.” 

Indeed, to be fair to Alpert, the full title of his 1970 book was “Remember: Be Here Now.” 

An utterly mixed message; perhaps so that anyone could take from it whatever they wanted. But that makes it useless as any kind of spiritual advice. Just a good hustle for a charlatan.

Depopulation Solutions

Things are getting ugly with mass immigration, legal and illegal. Natives are beginning to push back. People begin to feel their own governments are against them. Are they trying to replace their own population? Will Britain or France cease to exist?

The chief reason governments are doing this is, apparently, the growing crisis of depopulation. Government pension schemes are projected to go bankrupt without an infusion of younger workers to support the old. Depopulation means a shrinking economy. Mass immigration was meant to solve this. 

Now it seems to have been a mistake.

So what can governments do?

It may turn out to be a chimera. Elon Musk warns that within the near future, most jobs will be replaced by robotics and AI. We will not need a large population to keep the gears turning. And he predicts enough natural abundance that everyone will be able to live well without working. So no need for more people. No need to worry about social security.

Other scientists predict that, within the foreseeable future, we will find a cure for old age itself. People living longer will mean fewer children are needed to keep the population stable or growing. And these are healthy extra years, not needing to be pensioned.

Government interventions based on projected future crises usually make matters worse. When I was graduating high school, our biology teacher insisted we all read The Population Bomb, which warned us that by the 1980s the world would be starving due to overpopulation. Not underpopulation. Governments like China’s wheeled into action with draconian measures making our current crisis worse.

 The one thing we should not do is spend a lot of taxpayer money on proposed solutions that expand the role of government. Yet the usual suggestions are things like free day care, longer parental leave, or paying people to have children. Making post-secondary education free might look like a useful suggestion—it would reduce the cost of having children. But this has been tried, for example in Germany, and does not seem to make a difference.

Here are some cost-free steps we could take.

First, recriminalize abortion. This seems obvious. Were it not urgently needed for moral reasons, the last thing we should be doing in the circumstances is killing babies.

Second, ban or at least restrict contraceptives. This would of course be unpopular, but would cost nothing and obviously address the problem. 

Third, limit the division of assets at divorce, alimony and child support. A woman ending her marriage ought not to get paid more than another women for the same work, only because her partner earned more. Equal pay for equal work. This would reduce the risk of marriage for successful and wealthy men (or women), the sort who could otherwise afford to have more children.

Fourth, when a marriage breaks up, or a child is born, whoever pays child support gets custody of the child. This seems a no-brainer, and requires the minimum of state intervention. Without this stipulation, any man who marries or even has sex risks slavery. A huge disincentive.

Fifth, ban all programs requiring equal pay for women. Men traditionally got paid more than women not because of discrimination, but because they were assumed to be supporting a family. Nor was this philanthropy for the employer: a married breadwinner was going to be more stable and committed to their job. But this also promoted marriage and the ability to have and raise more children. This would cost the government nothing, and boost the economy at the same time.

Finally, a less practical suggestion; but perhaps the most effective. I think of an old Bob Dylan song, in which President Kennedy asks Bob, “What does it take to make the country grow?” And Dylan answers, “My friend John, Brigitte Bardot. Anita Ekberg. Sophia Loren.” 

Conversely, Scott Adams notes recent surveys report that American are having less sex. And he asks, could this be related to the obesity epidemic?

Sex makes babies. Being sexually attractive promotes sex.

The problem may resolve itself with new treatments for obesity, like Ozempic. 

But beyond this, how about restricting immigration to young, attractive foreign women? This would be an obvious enticement for MGTOW to change their minds. It is women who produce babies. And this way, each baby would at least be half-native, and a mixed family would preserve the local traditions. So much for the fear of becoming extinct as a culture.

If it’s a population emergency, we’re going to have to do it. We men are going to have to suck it up and take one for the team.

Or maybe two or three.

The Minneapolis Church Shootings

You have no doubt heard, read, and seen, about another mass shooting; at a church in Minneapolis. The shooter was “trans.”

There is some dispute, as there always is with statistics. Some are saying transvestites are disproportionately likely to engage in such mass shootings. Others insist this is a myth. I submit that they are, and it is predictable that they will be.

Let me explain why.

First, anyone declaring themselves “trans” is a narcissist. It is an ego claiming the right and the ability to overrule the physical world: to decide its own sex in defiance of biology. This is equivalent to declaring yourself God—extreme hubris. Acting as the other sex also attracts attention, which the narcissist craves.

This is why there are suddenly so many transgenders, when the tendency was almost unheard of in North America or Europe a hundred years ago. It is because our childrearing has shifted to “unconditional love” and building “self-esteem,” encouraging narcissism.

Inevitably, this narcissism involves a desire to dominate those around you. You will insist on others submitting to your imposed reality; they are not to be left alone, but must be made to assent publicly to your claimed reality. They must not, for example, “dead-name” you. They must use your preferred pronouns, even when you are not present. This also establishes your command over the English language.

This is necessarily a spiritual or psychic dead end. In the end, reality around you will not bend to your will. This causes built up anger, frustration, despair: the symptoms classified by current psychiatry as “depression.” 

Unfortunately, psychiatry and any therapist you go to will not recognize the problem, will not give any advice, but just prescribe you pills for the reported symptoms: SSRIs to dull the despair and anxiety.

SSRIs, like alcohol, deaden emotions, and this includes empathy. They reduce anxiety by silencing the voice of conscience. So, while arguably helpful for true depressives, they exacerbate narcissism.

So you are more likely to act out your anger and frustration on those around you. You will want to punish the world for not submitting to you. You will especially want to influence and to harm children, because they seem most innocent and vulnerable—the domination is most complete. But you will also want to lash out at God, as he is your obvious rival for complete dominance.

It is all perfectly predictable, and we are seeing it again and again.

It is a criminal misdirection to call for a ban on guns. And it is a well-meaning but disastrous error to call instead for more funding for “mental health.” The mental-health complex is causing the problem. The problem is not transgenderism, as such, but narcissism, which may or may not be expressed in transgenderism; and the problem is prescribing SSRIs for narcissists.

A more religious society is the ultimate solution.

The Too-Fantastic Four

 

I have now watched the new Fantastic Four movie for myself. 

The Fantastic Four mean a lot to me. They were my entrance to the Marvel Universe back in the “Silver Age.” I might have had FF#3. I was immediately addicted. 

The secret to the great success of Marvel is that Stan Lee understood the rules of the genre in which he was working: the hero legend. DC never did. I credit this to a proper Jewish education.

These heroes were real people with problems. There were references to real places.

The film fails because it does not understand the genre.

It is not just that they tinkered with the FF we knew and loved, by giving Reed Richards a different build and a moustache, or by swapping sexes on the Silver Surfer. Although that was bad enough. They also, gratuitously, had The Thing grow a beard halfway through the film. Another example of messing with the iconography. Heroes are semi-divine beings, and the iconography is important. You do not make Paul Bunyan’s ox pink. You do not make Santa Claus wear blue.

But more fundamentally, the plot line messed with the form.

The plot of the FF movie had spontaneous female emotion, on the part of The Invisible Girl and the Silver Surfer, triumph over both male reason (Reed Richards) and male strength (Galactus). This subverts the genre. It might work in a fairy tale, but this is a hero legend. In a hero legend, the hero triumphs by either strength or strategy. Not by stomping his foot and looking cross.

But to be honest, this is a bit beside the point. The film had lost me well before that, by about halfway through. Because special effects are now a dime a dozen, they are boring and destroy the willing suspension of disbelief. Every movie looks the same, and who cares? I am reminded of some solid writing advice from Mark Twain: “If you thunder and lightning too much, the reader stops hiding under the bed by and by.”

The movie lost my interest immediately when it blasted off into space. I felt insulted. It was not “superhero fatigue,” but special effects fatigue. It would still be wonderful to see a good movie made of the Fantastic Four. One that dealt with the characters, as the original comics did, or as the Joaquin Phoenix “Joker” movie did. This is what made the Fantastic Four special, and is the secret of the hero legend: when you can almost believe they exist in your own real world.

Whites Never Invented Anything?

 

Joy Reid has recently claimed online that white people never invent anything. 

This is obviously wrong in terms of engineering or science. Does she mean culture?

No, still obviously wrong: Beethoven, Da Vinci, Shakespeare—which one was black? Andy Warhol?

Perhaps she is thinking only about pop culture? It is true that pop culture has always been a pathway to success for minorities and the poor—since it relies, more than other fields, on pure merit, on talent. 

But here too, it is not clear that non-whites have made the bigger mark. Not in comic books, or advertising, or popular literature, or comedy, or film. Here, it is the Jews who stand out.

But perhaps in popular music, at least? Reid cites rock and roll.

The one striking contribution by blacks to American culture is the sense of spontaneity in music. Contrast jazz with classical music, with its emphasis on practice and precision. This is where American music, and American culture, most obviously differs from European, and it is reasonable to assume this is from African influence.

I suspect this is what Reid is thinking of, and she is wrongly conflating “spontaneity” with “creativity.”

Beyond music, this spontaneity has also spread into other aspects of American culture—into Beat poetry in the fifties, for example. Although the Beat poets were almost all white.

For rock and roll, Reid has a case. Although sometime credited to country music through “roackabilly,” I too think rock and roll emerges mostly from gospel music: Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The idea of spontaneity in art seems to emerge naturally from the idea of spontaneity in worship—letting the spirit move you. 

That said, this spontaneous style of worship did not begin in black congregations. It flows from the theology of various “white” Protestant denominations emerging first in Europe, like the Quakers, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Pentecostals.  Emotional, spontaneous worship is particularly characteristic of many Scots-Irish congregations in the Appalachians—like the snake-handlers. In which direction did the influence really run?

Many of the early Gospel composers were white.

Speaking of the Appalachians, Scots and Irish musical traditions are at least as strong in the American vernacular as anything that can be traced to Africa. Country music, bluegrass, tap dancing, folk music, are all easily identifiable as Irish and Scottish in origin. 

These all no doubt mixed in with black congregations, and black traditions, in the local area--in the South.

And the people mixed too. 

Over one third of African-Americans have Irish ancestry. Beyonce, Billie Holiday, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Rhiannon Giddens, may identify as “African American,” but they certainly have Irish ancestors as well, and much of their musicality and musical heritage may come from that line.

The spontaneity goes with the Protestant heritage of the United States, and the fact that it is, uniquely, a classless society. And it is deceptive and divisive to speak of “black culture” as opposed to American culture.

Elbows Down, Idiots!

Those aren't Mounties in the red coats.

Canadians, like most countries, live with various shared delusions. Perhaps it is their shared delusions that hold most countries together. But a particularly troublesome and dangerous one in the case of Canada is its anti-Americanism. 

This has my attention just now because I recently sat through a rant from a fellow Canadian irate at New York State for “stealing” the beaver as their official state mammal. “Those Americans want to take everything.”

Canada does not, of course, own the world’s beavers. New York State has as much right to the beaver as its mascot as does Canada.

Canada also did not, contrary to what every Canadian believes, defeat the USA in the War of 1812. Canada did not burn down the White House. 

The War of 1812 was a fight between the United States, on the one side, and Great Britain and Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy on the other. Canadian militia units, “fencibles,” did participate, as British subjects, in a relatively minor role. But it is safe to say that no Canadians were involved in the burning of the White House by the British Navy.

Britain ended the war in possession of everything they had at the start. As did the US. Tecumseh’s Confederacy collapsed. On balance, then, I’d say the US came out ahead. They did not conquer Canada; but that was not a war aim.

The kneejerk anti-Americanism among Canadians is a prejudice. Like all prejudices, it is immoral. Substitute “Jews” for “Americans” in all the standard complaints, and perhaps you can see where this is tending. “Those Jews want to take everything.”

Like antisemitism, it is based on envy of American relative success. This is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the worst next to pride. It is unworthy of a grown-up country.

It is doubly absurd since English Canadians and Americans are ethnically identical: the same language, the same accent, the same shared history, the same waves of immigration from the same countries, the same religion, the same geography, the same governmental and legal traditions. How can there be a sane basis for prejudice, even if prejudice were ever legitimate?

It is probably true that Canada owes its existence as a nation, and its relative freedom, to the United States. The American Revolution, the American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, and the US Bill of Rights, were the model and test case on which modern liberal democracy in general has been built, here as everywhere else. While Britain had its own liberal traditions, the American experiment pushed them further faster than would likely otherwise have been the case. The American example certainly led directly to the French Revolution, and then its many echoes throughout Europe. It forced Britain, over the next decades, to extend responsible government to their remaining North American colonies. The US Constitution also became the model for the federal system that defines Canada—for confederation.

The US further serves as the model for Canada as a non-ethnic state, America being the first nation based purely on human equality and human rights. As Laurier put it, “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.” If and as Canada is based on freedom, it is based on the example of the United States. The United States is the mother country.

Canada moreover could not ask for a better neighbour. The United States is ten times our size. They could easily conquer Canada in a week or two. Yet since 1815, they have made no attempt. Where else has peace between neighbours lasted so long? It has not even lasted that long internally in the United States. They have offered us free access to their markets—because the US market is so much larger, any free trade deal benefits Canada more than the US. Through NATO and NORAD, they have taken upon themselves responsibility for our defense—we could never secure our vast northlands by ourselves. We boast of our rich resources, as if we had somehow earned them. In a sense, we owe these too to the USA.

It is time we acknowledged this.

The Underlying Problem at Cracker Barrel

Everybody is making a big fuss about the re-branding of Cracker Barrel. I had never heard of Cracker Barrel before, but apparently it is huge in the US. It obviously matters deeply to people. It makes sense that I have never encountered it in Canada, the Philippines, Korea, or the Middle East—the whole point of it is American nostalgia.

And that is why people hate the re-branding. It is an attempt to give it a sleek, clean, modern look. This is obviously wrong for a company based on nostalgia. It is suicide. How could the executives have gotten it so wrong?

This calamitous mis-step is reminiscent of the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco at Bud Light, and the deterioration of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars. The problem in each case seems the same: losing touch with the essential market and mission of the company. To an almost unaccountable degree. 

And these three corporate collapses have something else in common: the executive in charge of the change was a woman. I do not know if this was also true of Target’s similar debacle, or Jaguar’s. But marketing departments these days are dominated by women.

Here’s where I take the flak: this illustrates of the eternal truth that women think differently from men. Women are detail oriented. Men are anchored to goals; get it done and don’t sweat the small stuff. Men see the forest: women see trees. Men act on principles; women act on likes and dislikes. Men will keep the market in mind. Women do not think that abstractly. They will want to please themselves and those they see every day.

This means men are better suited for top decision-making positions in any large enterprise, and women are better at handling the details: “help-meets,” secretaries, assistants. Girl Friday will keep things tidy, well-ordered, properly filed and aesthetically pleasing.

This was the wisdom of the ages. 

Of course there are exceptions; but as a general principle, it is about as reliable as assuming the average man will be more formidable at tackle football than the average woman.

We have been ignoring this reality for a couple of generations. The worst of it is not the billions lost by shareholders, the thousands of jobs lost by employees, the long traditions lost. On this path, we are headed for civilizational collapse.

 

Straight Talk on Annexation to the US

Reading local history makes clear how artificial the international border between Canada and the US is. Everyone had and has relatives in the States. A good number of men buried in the local cemetery fought for the Union in the American Civil War. American history is our history.

We are, by all accepted standards, the same people, culturally and ethnically, with the exception of Francophone Quebec. Not only do we speak the same language: we speak it with the same accent, so that I usually cannot tell, when I meet someone abroad, if they are Canadian or American. The same cannot be said of two Englishmen meeting abroad: they will know immediately by accent if someone is from Yorkshire as opposed to Cornwall. The same is true for France, or Italy, or Germany. They are far more regionally ethnically diverse than English Canada and the US.

The reason for Canada to exist as an independent entity was that some Americans at the time of the Revolution wanted to retain ties to Britain and to the royal family. That raison d’etre disappeared in about the 1930s. Canada now really has no more ties to Britain than does the US. The royal family is purely symbolic; just a face on the coins and stamps.

By all logic, English Canada should join the United States.

It is, in the first case, a matter of efficiency. It is costly to duplicate services. If Canadian Confederation was a good idea, joining the US is just an extension of the same good idea.

In the second case, it makes economic sense. A perfect common market would increase the prosperity of both sides by dropping significant barriers to trade and commerce. But it would especially increase the prosperity of Canadians, with greater access to the United States’ lager market.

But the strongest reason to unite is the Canadian Constitution. The passage of the Constitution Act in 1982 was a fatal mistake. It has turned Canada into a dictatorship by the unelected judiciary, it has enshrined gross inequalities, and it is virtually impossible to legally amend. The simplest course to change it would seem to be to join the US and come under the US constitution instead.

Unlike the US Constitution, or the prior Canadian Bill of Rights, the Canadian Constitution actually limits human rights. Citizens have rights “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” 

This vague phrase leaves it all up to judges. Who cannot be trusted—power corrupts.

The vagueness of the Charter generally gives the judiciary too much opportunity to interpret. The contrast to the clarity of the Canadian or the American Bill of Rights is striking.

Equality rights are denied by the phrase: “[this] does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”

Any particular group can be declared disadvantaged, and thereby given preference. Indeed, this is the usual trick. Hitler argued that ethnic Germans were disadvantaged by the Jews. South African Boers considered themselves disadvantaged after the Boer War. Mussolini declared Italians disadvantaged after Versailles. The whites of the US South considered themselves disadvantaged by the carpetbaggers after the Civil War.

It stands to reason that any group given preferential treatment by government is not disadvantaged by definition. For “disadvantaged,” read “advantaged,” and the matter is clear. Discrimination is enshrined in the Canadian Constitution. It is not in the American one.

Equality rights are also violated in clause 25: “The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada.”

This means there will forever be at least two classes of Canadian citizenship, and never equality. Aboriginals have special extra rights and freedoms according to the constitution.

And the gross mistake of “multiculturalism” is also enshrined in the Constitution, so that it cannot be corrected. “This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.”

This commits the government to working against the shared Canadian culture—just the opposite of what a government is there to do. For “multicultural heritage” read “ethnic ghettos.”

The fundamental problem is that those who drafted the Canadian Constitution had no vision nor principles other than the partisan considerations of their day: keeping various special interest groups happy. 

It leaves us no way out but either revolution, or annexation to the US. Of those who choices, annexation is vastly preferable.

Why Rylie Is Unattractive

 

There is a lot of chatter online about Rylie, a girl whom no men were interested in on a reality-TV Mormon dating show. Women are all shocked and offended that no man was interested in her. Men are all in agreement that she was showing all sorts of red flags.

The clip is apparently from at least five years ago. That the discussion comes up now is a sign of current female alarm at men checking out of the courtship and dating scene: MGTOW. 

The fact that female commentators cannot see why Rylie is unattractive shows how alienated the sexes are.

It is not that Rylie is physically unattractive. The sexes are separated by a curtain on the show—they are choosing based on her short self-introduction, not on looks.

The first red flag is that Ryan volunteers to go first. She wants to take the lead. That is unfeminine. She will expect a husband to take the back sea.

The second red flag is that she talks only about herself and her interests. She sounds self-centred and unempathic. 

The third red flag is that her future plans seem to rule out settling down. She is interested in adventure and looking forward to a trip to Australia. The point of courtship is to start a family, not a fling. Especially for a religious guy.

The fourth red flag is that she has expensive hobbies: travel across the globe, scuba diving, sky diving, hosting parties. Is she expecting her husband or boyfriend to fund this?

The fifth red flag is that she likes to party—a party girl. She likes to meet new people. A man marries to have a home and a woman who is always there.

The sixth red flag is that she makes demands right up front: “someone I can trust in and is going to be there for me”; without saying anything about what she offers in return. It is all take and no give. 

The seventh red flag is that she speaks with the feminist lilt: a rising intonation at the end of many sentences. This is a signal that one is not finished speaking: women who use it use it to dominate the conversation and not allow others to speak.

Remarkably, the women commentators see nothing wrong with her pitch or her attitude, and blame the men for not wanting to put their necks in her noose.

And none of them note that one of the men on the reality show was also rejected by all the women. None of them feel sorry for him, or feel he was treated badly. Showing an utter lack of empathy for men.

It all shows why so many men in the developed world are giving up on women. And why nobody is having children any more.

Why Fantastic Four Is Flopping

 

Pable Pascal as Mr. Fantastic

The new Fantastic Four movie is dying at the box office. It is a bit of a mystery.

Some say it is because of “superhero fatigue.” People have had enough of superhero movies; the excitement has worn off.

But this does not tally: the first weekend, the Fantastic Four receipts were good. People wanted to see a superhero movie. There must have been some problem with this particular superhero movie, which turned those initial audiences off.

According to most critics, the movie was a decent production: good acting, good plot. If we can trust them, the problem was not quality.

That leaves wokeness. Although the movie was not aggressively woke, Pablo Pascal did not look like the Reed Richards of the comic book. He was presumably cast because he was Latino: current Oscar rules require DEI casting to qualify for an award. And they sex-changed the Silver Surfer.

I think the cultural climate has changed fast enough that the audiences are no longer willing to sit down for this nonsense even on a moderate level.

Why would they? The appeal of watching a live-action superhero movie is in seeing the familiar comic book characters come to life. You want them to be as close as possible to those you cherish in your memory. This was a big problem with the earlier Fantastic Four films—they could not get The Thing looking right. This one succeeds, then throws it all away by getting Reed Richards and the Silver Surfer wrong. 

The same thing, of course, applies to race-swapping and sex-swapping in live-action remakes of the classic fairy tales. The principle is so simple, and so simple to understand, and yet they keep deliberately getting it wrong. This shows contempt for the original creation, like painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. By extension, it shows contempt for the audience, the fan base. 

What did they think would happen?

Sane Canada

 

I first understood Canada had gone completely off the rails when Henry Morgentaler, the abortion doctor, was awarded the Order of Canada in 2008. And this was actually under a Conservative government. This was a declaration of war against morality, religion, and human rights. 

I will not believe that Canada has returned to sanity and freedom until I see:

• That Morgentaler Order of Canada posthumously revoked.
• All the statues of Sir John A Macdonald restored.
• Bill C-11, Bill C-18, and Bill C-63 or its successors, which censor free speech, repealed.
• Government funding pulled from the “legacy” media, restoring a free press.
• Tamara Lich and Chris Barbour cleared of all charges; with some form of reparations. Perhaps an Order of Canada for each.
• The Emergencies Act amended in such a way as to prevent a repeat of the Trudeau government’s actions in suppressing lawful and peaceful protest from ever happening again. One thought is that if invoking the act, a government must also fall, an election called in three months, with any members of the current cabinet not eligible for re-election.

Currently, we are still rushing in the wrong direction. But this poisonous red tide can turn--as it turned in China after the devastation of the Cultural Revolution. As it seems to be decisively turning now in the US.

Mad Canada

I don’t know if you’ve noticed it yet, but most Canadians are mad.

You might object. Who am I to make such a judgement? Isn’t it more likely, if everyone else thinks differently, that I am the insane one? Orwell said, “Madness is a minority of one.” 

And this is indeed how modern psychiatry tends to frame it.

An example of the current madness: this is the ad populum fallacy. Reality is not determined by popular vote. We cannot vote to make the earth flat. 

I believe I have some perspective on this, from studying philosophy, comparative religions, and history, and from living abroad in diverse cultures: China, Korea, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, not to mention across Canada and in the US. I also married into a Pakistani family. 

Surely this allows me to see beyond the common consensus, and judge it.

Canadians are mostly mad.

To be fair, not just Canadians. Koreans are also mad. Americans are mad. Brits are mad. Japanese are mad. Filipinos are sane. Arabs are mostly sane, if you step away from mentioning Jews or Israel. 

What makes the difference? Wealth seems to be part of it: rich people go crazy. And we have always known this: large manor homes are always haunted. There are skeleton closets.

But that, I think, is not the key. Wealth drives you crazy because, as the Gospel warns, wealth drives you away from God. It turns your focus towards the world.

And belief in God, the necessary first premise, is required for sanity. 

In Filipino or in Arab culture, the existence of God is taken as a given.

In Canada, Korea, America, Britain, Japan, even when nominally acknowledged, God is mostly ignored. He seems at most an abstract concept.

You will object that in America there is a distinct and lively evangelical element. There is indeed; that is why there is hope for America. But even in America, this is a counterculture. In the Philippines or Saudi Arabia, monotheism is the mainstream.

In the New Testament, Jesus and the apostles spend most of their time casting out demons. This is their initial mission. In the early church, exorcist was a common ecclesial rank. It was assumed that any pagan converts needed to be exorcised. The rapid spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire, the rest of Europe, and today across Africa, was due to its famed ability to cast out demons.

And the classical gods were demons, as the early Christians indeed identified them. Each was or represented an obsession that could possess the mind.

Broadly, what we now call mental illness.

Now that faith in Christianity is waning, the demons are returning.

God is not just the ground of being, but also the ground of reason; he is the necessary first premise from which anything else and everything else is deduced. This, I think, is evident in Descartes’ Meditations: our warrant that anything else is real is that God is real, and would not deceive us.

Pull that anchor, and we know nothing. We do not even know, contra Descartes, that we ourselves exist. Buddhism challenges this very premise.

This is why in Buddhist and Hindu Asia, without a strong tradition of ethical monotheism, everything is seen as illusion, a moving sea of dreams. Not just the physical universe, either; but chains of induction, systematic philosophy, do not form. Only gnomic aphorisms, bursts of insight.

And the rapid growth of insanity in the developed world is due to the collapse of faith in God. The demons are returning.

On a social level, to give an example of how we have come untethered—without the anchor of God, we no longer understand what human equality means.  Many—it seems most—now think it means people are the same, or even that they all deserve the same life outcomes. There is, for example, the feminist doctrine that men and women are the same and should perform all the same roles in equal proportions.

We can see this is obviously wrong, in athletics. Yet many deny it even here.

Human equality really means equal moral worth; equal worth in the eyes of God. And therefore equal treatment by the law. This is founded on Descartes’s reasoning: God exists; God is perfect goodness; God is just. It follows that God values us equally, in principle, judging us only on our own volitions. For this reason, for God’s sake, we must treat our neighbour as our equal.

Pull God from that equation, and it does not work. If we are not seeing it from God’s view, we are seeing it only from our own. Human worth, good and evil, is then based on our neighbour’s usefulness to us, or to the society as a whole.

One can immediately see how this has led to some of the worst mass murders and social upheavals of the last century and more; the worst cases of social madness.

Without the anchor of God, we similarly no longer understand freedom. Freedom is now just freedom to be selfish: self-indulgence, being able to do what we want, when we want.

Yet this is obviously wrong. The alcoholic wants to have another drink. Yet being an alcoholic is the opposite of freedom: it is enslavement to a want. 

So too with most other wants. There is a truth to the old joke, “everything I want to do is either immoral, illegal, or fattening.” Most wants are addictions that, indulged too often, soon enslave us and do us harm.

True freedom is freedom to do what God wants. It is freedom of conscience: the freedom to do what our conscience tells us we ought to do.

Because we no longer understand this, social policy has become warped. It has actually been suppressing freedom of conscience, for the sake of feeding addictions.

Without the anchor of God, we cannot even agree on what is real. “Once people stop believing in God, they will believe anything.” Science is breaking down, along with public morality and civil discourse.

America, at least, now looks as though it might be regaining lucidity. I credit this to that evangelical remnant in the culture.

The Myth of the Dying Indian

Hills and Angry Waters-- an old poem about Saint John, New Brunswick

Where bold the hills outjutting to the reef rough swept with spray,
And Whygoody's swirling water meets the tides of Fundy Bay,
An Indian Chieftain with his tribe had camped upon a day
By the coves and purling brooks of Managuashe.

Straight stood the chief outgazing o'er the billows flecked with foam,
Where the broken sunbeams wander and the shapeless shadows roam.
The south wind brought its message of the salmon speeding home,
To their river haunts beyond bold Managuashe.

 
Then blazed the bonfires brightly on the hills from bay to bay,
And the Indian braves and maidens danced and sang in wild array.
The Indian Chieftain and his tribe feasted 'till dawn of day,
On the old and loyal resorts of Managuashe.

Again gazed Panamseguis o'er the deep on rushing tide;
Now, his eyes were strained in wonder, low he bowed his head and sighed,
And to his people thus he spoke, humbled his voice and pride.
On the forest camping ground of Managuashe.

 
My brothers, braves and children of the noble Malicete,
Your hearts will burn with anger at the sight your eyes shall meet.
Behold! Upon you swelling flood the vanguard of a fleet
Which shall take from us our rugged Managuashe.

 
Many moons ago a vision by the great Manitou sent,
Appalled mine eyes and spirit, and I heard my tribe's lament.
I saw a wondrous great canoe with glistening wings intent,
On harbour making here at Managuashe.

 
Braves of some mighty nation strange, and of a feature white,
With thunderous magic weapons which blazed upon the night;
My people, like the falling leaves, sadly in hopeless plight,
Were scattered from the glens of Managuashe.

 
The vision changed and clearly I saw with wondering eyes,
Habitations, huge and strange, of a mighty race arise,
People of marvellous ways, and deft of hand, and wise,
Swarming great trails o'er Managuashe.

 
Then came to on the spirit of the "Hills and Angry Waves,"
His footfall like the trampling of swift and countless braves,
His voice like surging breakers in the deep and rocky caves.
Along the shore of lofty Managuashe.

 
His features stern, yet kindly, were wreathed in vapor cold,
His garment as pine needles, woven with ferns of gold,
He took my hand and sadly, and now our fate is told,
He led me from beloved Managuashe.

 
LH.W.

This poem is a nearly perfect expression of the myth of the Dying Indian. You’ve seen it many times in movies. Everyone thinks it is true. Indians are always dead or dying. It is like the similar myth of the Magic Negro.

The Indians are not dead and not gone. They are living in Saint John. I see them on the public transit and in the mall. And I, and many of the other riders or shoppers, probably have Indian blood, even if they do not know this, or look Indian or identify as Indian. There are many more Indians in Canada now than there were when the first modern Europeans were sighted.

They have not moved anywhere. The truth is more the reverse. Before the Europeans came, they were always moving. Now they generally stay in one place. Maliseet (Wolastoqay) Indians moved their village about every two years; the Cree every two weeks.

Their lands were never taken from them. Eighty percent of New Brunswick, and ninety percent of Canada, is still wild, unsettled, and available for hunting and foraging. The rest was sold by treaty. There are simply better ways for modern Indians to make a living, less vulnerable to famine and starvation in a bad season.

Their eyes did not burn with anger at the coming of the Europeans. The local Indians, here as in most other places, welcomed the Europeans and urged them to stay for the opportunity to trade, for access to their better technology and system of government, and for protection against their enemies. There were no “Indian wars” here—wars in which one side was Indian, and the other European. There were wars between European powers, and between Indian groups, and they might have intersected, but not Indian versus European wars. The political divide was not Indian versus European.

And there was no vanguard of a fleet here in Acadia or the Maritimes. Starting at or before Estevan Gomes in 1535, there were occasional visits by one or two ships at a time, fishermen or explorers, for a couple of centuries. Gradually there were trading posts, and a few French families came to farm the marshes. The French were not here for land; they were here for trade and to spread the gospel. Only at the end of the eighteenth century did you get the first fleet of Europeans seeking to settle—the Loyalist refugees (some of them Indians) driven out of the US.

Why are we determined to believe the Indians are gone?

Because Indians represent to us the innocence of our own childhood. We see a trace of this in the poem: as the Europeans appear, the Indians are dancing and singing—just having fun. And then the annoying adults show up, and tell them it is bedtime.

Since our childhood is irretrievably gone, we must also understand the happy carefree innocent Indians to be gone. Since we miss our childhood, we also lament the supposed disappearance of the Indians. It is ourselves we are feeling sorry for.

The pre-Columbian life of the native peoples was of course not at all the idyll we imagine.

And neither was our childhood.

We all need to grow up.